


Monster

by dt01



Category: Defiance (TV)
Genre: Borderline Personality Disorder, Gen, Mental Health Issues, Mental Instability, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-17
Updated: 2015-01-17
Packaged: 2018-03-07 21:39:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 988
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3184103
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dt01/pseuds/dt01
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Niles knows he's a monster. Truly, he does.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Monster

The closest Niles has ever come to telling someone about his old world diagnoses was when he asked Amanda whether she found mental illness intriguing or not. It was a spur of the moment thing to reply with, “Lucky for me.”

He’s glad she didn’t ask for details. He wouldn’t have been able to tell her about the rest. Eventually it would have led to her finding out about all the horrible things he’d done to her and he couldn’t have that. He couldn’t lose her. Not like he’d lost everyone else. 

And that’s the thing. Niles knows he’s a monster. Truly, he does. He told Amanda that and he tells it to himself every day before he gets out of bed in the morning. He’s aware that he’s manipulative, creepy, and abusive. He can’t stop it though. Not here. Not now. It’s too deeply ingrained in whom he’s become for him to put those demons to rest. 

When he was a boy, two years after the trauma with the Votans, his parents had sent him to a hospital so that he could be “helped.” He was disturbed, they said. He needed more than they could help him with on their own. They left him there for months. Months in cold white room with no one to call on. They didn’t visit him. He had no one to comfort him. No one to help, despite the fact that that’s what was supposed to be happening. They served him tasteless food, gave him awful pills, and told him what to do and when to do it. They weren’t kind to him either. He’d cry and cry into his pillow at night and they’d come in and sedate him so he’d fall asleep. They’d sedate him whenever he exhibited an overly emotional reaction. Eventually, he started seeing a Doctor every week. The Doctor would ask him questions and with every truthful answer Niles tried to give he’d shake his head and look disapprovingly down at his clipboard. 

He had outbursts of intense rage. Rage that he couldn’t control. Throwing things, screaming at the top of his lungs, tearing at his own skin until it bled, all just to ease the tidal wave of pain inside of him. Two months into his stay he realized he was losing his mind. That his parents had sent him away because he was going nuts. Something had happened to him and he was going crazy. He realized he’d never be sane again. He’d tried to bash his head into a wall that night. He’d tried to kill himself violently and beautifully and blissfully. They’d sedated him before he could finish the job.

That’s when his parents finally came back. Doctor Raymond had decided he knew what was wrong. He knew what was making Niles lose his mind. He had a diagnosis. Niles hoped desperately that if they had an answer, they could finally help him.

Dr. Raymond sat him and his family down in his sparse, uncomfortable, office and told them what he’d gathered from his notes.

“You’re son has a personality disorder I’m afraid. It’s called Borderline Personality Disorder to be exact. It’s a very dangerous disorder. People with this problem often present as a danger to themselves and others. He also has symptoms of PTSD. Not unexpected of course, after what he’s been through. In fact both of these problems, I suspect, stem from his trauma. Though that could have been what tipped scale with the Borderline issue, he’s probably had certain traits since birth.”

On and on he went about Niles’ insanity. On and on he went about how it was best that they keep him in the hospital for as long as possible. He said that Niles couldn’t be fixed with medication and since the Votans had come mental health professionals that once would have been able to treat him were in short supply. He was dangerous.

As he’d spoken Niles had felt the rage again. He’d felt the sense of pure hopelessness and abandonment beating rat-a-tat-tat in his chest until he couldn’t breathe and he could barely see. His ears were ringing and betrayal was what screamed inside his head. He doesn’t remember exactly what happened then but he does remember being held down, and as he’d looked around the office he saw his parents huddling in a corner, his mother sobbing into his father’s shoulder, his father staring in horror. He remembers seeing the chairs had been upturned, shattered glass all over the floor, and Dr. Raymond with a bloody nose.

Monster.

Monster.

Monster.

That was when he’d first started identifying as one. Since then he’d never been able to see himself as anything else. It was by pure luck that the hospital was shut down and he was released. He didn’t return home, instead he joined the Earth Republic and fought in the war. He learned how to keep a tight lid on his problems for the most part, and lucky for him a cruel man in the midst of a war isn’t something easily noticed. In fact, he became a decorated soldier, a powerful man, just because he had the guts to do things others didn’t. Because he knew that the extreme always did make an impression. Because he was excruciatingly brilliant. Once he reached that level of power, well he didn’t have to worry as much about acting a certain way. He could do what he liked for the most part. It was the most freeing thing he’d ever felt. It was wonderful.

Niles is a monster. That’s a fact. But people don’t know that he fought all his inner demons completely alone, in the middle of a full-blown war. They don’t comprehend the fact that it’s a miracle he made it this far. They don’t understand that he’s sick in more ways than one, and he’ll never be the one to let them know.

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know. This is just something I quickly threw together. I might expand on it later. Or turn it into a larger story or something but for now it was sort of a self-help fic for my own mental health issues. I really feel like Niles could have BPD, he exhibits a lot of the symptoms and I just needed one of my fave characters to be in the same boat as me for a bit and I wanted to explore this character's psyche.


End file.
